1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and in particular to a method and apparatus for processing data. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for managing information used by lightweight directory access protocol environments.
2. Description of the Related Art
Lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) is an application protocol used to query and modify directory services. A directory service is a software application or a set of software applications that store and organize information. This information may include, for example, information about network users and resources. Servers employing lightweight directory access protocol applications may search through directories in response to queries from a user and return results of the query to the user. For example, a user may search for all people located in Chicago whose name contains “David” that have an email address. The query for this search may request a return of a full name, email, title, and description. The results of this query may be returned to the user.
Further, lightweight directory access protocol services may be applied to other types of information. For example, a lightweight directory access protocol service may be used to search for information, such as, for example, encryption certificates, pointers to printers, applications of servers, and other services on a network.
Lightweight directory access protocol environments may be extremely large and complex to manage. These types of environments may be distributed over large geographic areas and usually contain numerous replicas.
In large environments, tasks, such as, maintaining consistent software levels, operating system levels, lightweight directory access protocol configurations, lightweight directory access protocol replication monitoring, hardware, and other system configurations that pertain to lightweight directory access protocol services, may become difficult to manage. Current processes for tracking server configurations are extremely cumbersome and require extensive manual data gathering. Oftentimes, personnel or users are required to go to the different computers on which the servers' applications are located on to verify information, such as, for example, operating system levels, configuration settings, hardware configurations, and replication settings.
This type of currently used process requires time and effort that increases as the number of servers increase and geographic area expands for a lightweight directory access protocol environment. Further, this manual process also may be error prone when relying on different users to identify all of the information needed to maintain and manage a lightweight directory access protocol environment.